


Memories of Yesterday

by LadyRhiyana



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: F/M, Mortality, Sesshoumaru has feelings, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 23:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18292649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRhiyana/pseuds/LadyRhiyana
Summary: "Sesshoumaru-sama," she asked one day, echoing an old, old question, "will you remember me when I die?"





	Memories of Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from ff.net. Originally posted way back in 2005-2006.
> 
> Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. I'm just borrowing it for my own amusement.

_…when he thought of Asfiad, he thought of…a dark-eyed woman, as if it were yesterday…_

C. J Cherryh, 'Fortress of Owls'.

**

When she was fourteen years old, she fell into a ravine and shattered her leg. Tenseiga, powerful as it was, could not heal mere physical injury; the bone healed crookedly, and she would limp painfully forever more.

He built a cottage for her, in a secluded, forgotten valley, stamped his mark on it and the surrounding lands, and left her there on her own, secure in the knowledge that no foe, youkai or human, would dare harm her. He had thought, perhaps, that she would prefer a human village, but Rin was shy and wary of other humans – and other humans, she said, would be wary and fearful of her.

For eight years, since she had been a small child, she had been his, had lived under his protection. He had provided her with food, clothing and the shelter of his warmth, and, youkai that he was – not human, never human, despite his appearance – he had noted with possessive satisfaction the layer of his scent she had acquired, almost disguising the mortal, human reek.

She smelled like him, like inuyoukai. She had travelled with him for so long that she was no longer fully human in any way other than superficial physicality; she had no concept of human standards of morality or behaviour, and none of the superstitious human fear of death and the unknown.

They would hate and fear her, she said, because she was different, and shun her because she had once belonged to a youkai.

_Sesshoumaru-sama,_ she had said, her old-young eyes meeting his fleetingly, but not long enough to challenge him, _Rin knows she can no longer travel with you._ She had moved closer, ancient in her awakening instincts. _But she still wants to stay with you forever..._

She was human.

But she was _his_ , and she had learned very well how to serve and please him. In her mind, she had a right to his protection, and thought it only fitting that this should be the natural progression of their relationship.

If she were lucky, she would live some three-score years. She was of sturdy, earthy peasant stock, and such folk knew no illusions or inhibitions; she had been exposed to sex and death from an early age and knew them to be natural aspects of life. Sesshoumaru had far more qualms, if even less restraint: youkai were creatures of habit, and it was not so long ago that she had been a whelp, a pup under his care.

He left her there alone and went back on his wanderings, endlessly roaming his borders and patrolling his lands. He killed when it suited him, brutally and emphatically, to leave an unmistakable message; he walked untouched, unmoved, unchanging through the land, a white, terrible ghost who had never known mercy, never known compassion, and had never cared for a little girl.

** 

Then, one day, he returned to the hidden valley, to the small cottage in the woods, and found Rin drawing water from the well. She straightened when she saw him, moving with some pain in the cold morning air, and he saw that her eyes were dark, and ancient, and knowing.

"Sesshoumaru-sama," she said, her voice no longer childish. "You have returned." She smiled, and for a moment, she was bright, innocent Rin again. "I knew you would."

Irresistibly, driven by some force he could not describe, he drew closer, close enough to smell her, to check her scent and make sure that she still smelled like him, even after an absence of more than a year. Her hair was longer, now that she was staying in one place, and thick and black and wiry, and her skin was warm and flushed, the blood pumping strongly just below the surface. She smelled of human sweat, and wood smoke, and of the earth and forest, and…yes, there it was. The musky, furry scent that was his and his alone, distinctive and unmistakable, and more indicative of his ownership than any number of marks or fine kimonos.

She tipped her face up, exposing her throat, accepting his dominance unquestioning. He stared down at her, his face blank, his golden eyes unreadable. "Rin," he asked, "is this what you want?"

Her eyes met his, steadily. "Yes." There was no doubt in her, no calculation – this was no ploy to bind him tighter to her, no search for advancement or power. To Rin, this was natural; she was his, and so consequently he was hers; she would serve him and please him and he would protect her against all harm.

He nodded, picked up the bucket of water for her, and carried it into the tiny cottage. The walls were rough-hewn wood, the gaps stuffed with thick green moss, and the roof thatched with twigs, but there was a small tatami and there were expensive bronze braziers scattered round, and the bed was piled with thick, luxurious wolf furs that he himself had hunted.

When he tumbled her down onto them, she reached out to him, her eyes old and knowing, bright and innocent all at once.

In the morning he woke, saturated in her scent and her touch and her presence, his fine white hair tangled with hers; she had made a point of mixing them, fascinated by their combined glow in the firelight, by the intimate curtain it made, surrounding them, binding them together. His single hand was draped over her protectively, the razor-sharp claws instinctively gentle on her skin, that fragile, utterly defenseless human skin.

He untangled himself, and left before she woke.

** 

Some time later, he returned, finding nothing changed. She still watched him with her young-old eyes, and she went willingly with him to the bed. He watched her as she slept, silently committing her to memory, fixing this moment in his mind – his youkai mind, with its capacity for sensual memory, for forever preserving touch-sight-smell-taste-sound – against the inevitable march of time.

He was a taiyoukai. His life would stretch on forever, if nothing interfered with the normal course of things. He knew, rationally, that she would grow up, grow old, and eventually die – such was the way with mortals, and not even Tenseiga could prevent it – but he had never before seen the full implications of it.

One day, she would die.

One day he would return, and she would not be here, waiting for him.

He deliberately flattened his hand on her soft, vulnerable stomach, and leaned over to wake her from her sleep.

** 

"Sesshoumaru-sama," she asked one day, echoing an old, old question, "will you remember me when I die?"

They relaxed before the fire, Sesshoumaru lying with his head in her lap, she running her gnarled fingers smoothly through his long, white hair.

The last time she had asked, she had been a child, satisfied with a child's answers. Now, she was a woman, and the question encompassed so much more. No one else knew of her existence – save Jaken, who would not talk – and she would leave no children, no family, to speak her name and remember her when she was gone.

No one save him.

He would carry her memory with him always, into the uncounted centuries that stretched, endless, ahead of him. He would never be able to forget her – she would stay with him, child, girl, and woman, with almost painful clarity for the rest of life.

"Yes," he said.

He could not see it, but he knew she smiled. Not the bright, joyous smile of her youth, but an old, tired, wise smile, as much filled with happiness as pain. Such was the insight of age, that he, centuries older than she, had still yet to attain.

He would remain seemingly young and beautiful forever. But sometime in the next winter or two, she would die.

** 

He stayed until the end, caring for her as she had always cared for him, forcing himself to witness the end of her life, granting her his protection and care for the very last time. It was hard to believe that this old, withered, shrunken shell was his Rin, who had once been a laughing, dancing, chattering whirlwind – only the eyes were the same, the young-old eyes; even his scent had been obscured by the pressing, rank smell of her coming death.

He could not defend her from Death a second time.

At the very end, as he watched her eyes start to dim, she lifted her hand slowly, painfully, and laid it, light and fragile as the butterflies she had so loved, on his cheek.

She smiled at him, one last time.

And then she was gone.

He stayed there, kneeling by the bedside for a time, holding her hand to his cheek as if he could hold her to him again, but eventually the flesh cooled, and stiffened, and he knew, finally, incontrovertibly, that she was dead, and he was alone.

He stood up, arranging her hands on the furs – wolf furs that he had provided, because she feared them so – and deliberately, perhaps even ceremoniously, set fire to the small cottage in the woods, the cottage he had given her and in which she had lived so many of her years. He stood and watched, as he had watched her death, until the very last remnants of it crumbled to ash.

** 

Centuries later, wandering his lands, changed as they were from the days when he had first roamed them with his father, so very long ago, he came across what had once been a secluded little valley. Now, of course, it was a housing estate, and the humans had cleared the woods and covered the ground in concrete and bitumen.

But if he looked with the eye of his memory, he could see it as it had once been – a green wood, filled and overshadowed with his power and protection, and a small wooden cottage, with a dark eyed woman standing at the well, smiling at him as he came into sight.


End file.
